Ruth Appelhof Gets Her Due At ArtHamptons

Those familiar with Ruth Appelhof know her as the near-flawless, kind, community-oriented executive director of Guild Hall in East Hampton. Her hair and makeup always look professionally done, and her sartorial choices are not to be rivaled. She is, hands down, one of the most put-together individuals on the East End. Picking apart the face of Guild Hall is like trying to cut marble with a needle.

That is, until she disclosed her delinquent past last week during an interview in her East Hampton office.

In high school, Ms. Appelhof played hooky on occasion. While the image of a 16-year-old Ms. Appelhof skipping school to smoke cigarettes and shoplift is thrilling, it, sadly, was not the case. Instead, she visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., with her friends, where she indulged in her passions for art and its history.

“There wasn’t a lot of intellectual in my life, so to walk through the National Gallery was heaven,” she explained.

These days, Ms. Appelhof can tour art-filled galleries whenever the mood strikes—and, starting Thursday, July 2, the first contemporary art fair of the season will appropriately honor her with a lifetime achievement award for all she has accomplished.

The eighth annual ArtHamptons, which has moved from its previous location at Nova’s Ark to a private estate on Lumber Lane in Bridgehampton, will represent 67 galleries from 15 countries through Sunday, housing thousands of pieces of art worth millions of dollars under a 40,000-square-foot tent, or what founder Rick Friedman calls a “modular museum.”

“Art has become, over the last eight years, the new contact sport of the Hamptons—better than spinning,” he laughed. “Everyone wants to play the art-buying game.”

This year, the game is open to a wider pool of players than in years past. According to Mr. Friedman, prices begin around $2,000 and make their way up to an “accessible” $50,000. “That’s where the action is,” he said. “I think they’ll be excited to see somewhat affordable art. I think everyone has a chance to buy something. They’ll see art from every corner of the world.”

Ms. Appelhof, who will be honored on Sunday, spearheaded Guild Hall’s massive renovation in 2004—a project that took five years to complete. Her patience and persistence were instrumental, and they are two traits she honed at a young age.

She was just 10 years old when her father, Edward Stevens, died, leaving behind his G.I. Bill from his service in World War II, which she used to put herself through Syracuse University. Over the course of 24 years, she earned three degrees—a bachelor’s degree in painting and art history, a master’s degree in art history, and a doctorate in humanities—all the while raising two children from her first marriage, Gregory and Lee Ann, on her own.

For her senior thesis in graduate school, she interviewed and lived with Lee Krasner—wife of Jackson Pollock and an artist in her own right—in her Springs home during the summer of 1975. It was her first brush with the Hamptons and, through her host, she met the greats: Willem de Kooning, John Little and Hans Namath, to name a few. “They were people I had only read about in textbooks,” she said, “and Lee was having dinner parties with them.”

After her summer with Ms. Krasner, Ms. Appelhof took a 25-year hiatus from the Hamptons, starting with a fellowship in the curatorial department at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan that led her to curate and direct museums across the country. She garnered a reputation wherever she went, transitioning museums from the 16th century to the 20th, just as she did at Guild Hall in the early 2000s.

Ten years earlier, while working as executive director of the Minnesota Museum of American Arts, she met businessman Gary Adamek. “And this, like, weird thing happened,” she recalled. “I fell in love.”

Minnesota is more than 1,400 miles from Connecticut, where Mr. Adamek lived, so the couple promised that when one found a job for the other in their state, the other would make the move. In 1997, Mr. Adamek won. Soon, Ms. Appelhof was working as the executive director of the Hill-Stead Museum in Connecticut, and they married. But a year later, Guild Hall’s vacant executive director position came across her desk.

In 1999, they moved to the East End, Ms. Appelhoff remembering her summer in Springs with Ms. Krasner 25 years earlier, thus beginning her 16-year tenure as executive director. And at age 75, Ms. Appelhof doesn’t see retirement in her near future.

“I’m really looking forward to the next few decades because I think I can get a lot done still,” she said. “Luckily, now, I have a lot of people that I think will help and support me, and one of my real dreams is to write something about Lee Krasner after my time here. I never published the interviews I have with her. Now I have them transcribed, so I am excited to do something.”

The eighth annual ArtHamptons will open on Thursday, July 2, with a Black Card First Hour from 5 to 7 p.m., followed by a VIP preview party from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at 900 Lumber Lane in Bridgehampton. The show continues on Friday, July 3, and Saturday, July 4, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday, July 5, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Free valet parking. Tickets are $125 for the Black Card preview, $75 for VIP preview party, $20 for a three-day general admission pass and $25 for a one-day pass. For a full schedule of events, call (631) 283-5505, or visit arthamptons.com.